I find it unfair that, at least where I live, you cannot return a product if you do not agree with a product's privacy policy when most of the products now are unusable unless you agree with the privacy policy

Believe it or not, some of us have zero tech knowledge and just want a plug and play service for email.

I've gradually moved most things away from Google, but my biggest hurdle seems to be email. Hours spent trawling through reddit and have tried protonmail, Posteo and mailbox.org.

All emails from all three keep landing in various recipients spam folders. Recipients include gmail, outlook and three separate business emails.

The more I read, the more I see conflicting information. "Custom domain fixes this issue" then "custom domain doesn't fix the issue" and then do stuff with DMARC and mxtools etc.

I'm not one of these people who complain about the cost of privacy and am willing to spend $$ for the privilege, but it just seems that once you jump one hurdle another problem presents itself.

Is there a provider out there that just works without all this pissing around in settings with words like 'certificates' and having to mess around with acronyms like DMARC and change DNS settings and emailing a certain email address that emails you back with a list of issues to help you identify the problem, which requires a background in tech to actually resolve.

It's getting to the point where I'm actually considering whether I value my privacy enough to deal with this. (Yes I know it's not the issue with proton, Posteo etc, but the work to get this fixed is insane).

Surely there are some other tech impaired people out there with the same issue who have maybe found a solution.

(PS I don't need a service that accepts custom domain, I don't have one and don't want one. Purely mentioned it because a few people mentioned using a custom domain as a fix to the spam issue).

I want to ask a question. It's not part of my heritage. Just on the open internet, I want to ask a question. How can I not have services tracking me because I asked a question?

After the DentaQuest data breach in May, I was offered 24 months of free Knoll monitoring. The data breach leaked info such as name, bday, SSN. However to enroll in Knoll, I also need to submit the same sensitive info. Knoll itself has had a breach in the past in 2023, and apparently they keep your info forever even after the 24 months end. So is it worth it to give my info to another company that may accidentally leak it for the free monitoring? Idk what to do.

All this LG privacy talk finally kicked me into looking more into this which I have put off.

Wondering what solutions you guys suggest. I have a raspberry pi I can run pi-hole on or simply use nextDNS.

But I dont even like webOS... It seems like AppleTV is better privacy wise than NVidia shield.

What option would this community recommend?

Thanks in advance!

This one is pretty easy to miss.

Twitch recently added a “Training for Generative AI” setting that lets Amazon use your channel content to train generative AI models.

The setting is ON by default.

That can include your:

• Streams

• VODs

• Clips

• Stream chats

• Channel text and images

The weird part is that Twitch didn't exactly make this a huge announcement. The setting is buried in your privacy settings, so unless you know it's there, you probably won't go looking for it.

And Twitch's own wording says:

“Allow your channel content to train generative AI content models at Amazon.”

You can turn it off here:

Twitch → Settings → Security and Privacy → Training for Generative AI → OFF

One important thing though: turning this off only applies to your own channel content. If you chat in someone else's stream, their settings can determine whether that chat is eligible for AI training.

Also, this isn't Twitch suddenly starting AI training for the first time. Amazon had already been using Twitch content for AI development. What's new here is the explicit opt-out setting and the default-on approach.

And apparently Twitch's reasoning for making it opt-out was basically that if it were opt-in, hardly anyone would agree to it.

Go check your setting. Was yours already ON?

I use various privacy focused and FOSS applications/services anywhere I can, but I’ve never gotten into network-wide modifications. Relevant stories keep hitting my feed with Mullvad now looking to support Quad9 and the recent news of LG TVs listening to you. Also I’ll never forget the Samsung washing machines sending GBs of data. I’d like to be able to learn about and set up some blocking and filtering on my home network, but I’m concerned it will interfere with people in my household who work from home. I also unfortunately still use the default Verizon Fios router that they give you. I never bothered to do the research and spend the money on a third party one. Is this a problem or can I effectively set up this stuff regardless? Any good comprehensive sources to learn this stuff? Thank you.

Hi all,

It dawned on me after watching Gamers Nexus's video about LG spying and recording audio and converting it into text and that whatever I'm typing is probably being sent to some company that sells it. It's free data for them, I want to find a keyboard that's local and privacy-focused.

Any recommendations?

Apple has a new feature in iOS 18 with Tap To Cash, where you can send money to other iOS devices without sending any personal information like email or your personal number.

It’s only for Apple users looks but seems pretty good Instead of things like Venmo, PayPal, Zelle etc

Anyone here have more info about if it is more secure for sending money?

Cisco said in licensing agreement “Cisco may share this information with select third parties in an anonymous aggregated form.” other chips use similar software and do same practice.

even though it’s de-identified, I don’t want to have my device collect and share the data with advertisers and AI training used to identify behavior metrics. has anyone seen devices that prohibit this firmware or use privacy software that blunts these coll3ction methods?

The last TV I bought had a CRT. Really. I’m looking to just buy something inexpensive and hook it up to a DVD player and (maybe) an Apple TV. If I never connect the TV directly to the internet, do I have to worry about the damn thing spying on me?

I just came back from reading a post about a woman whose deleted Instagram pictures reappeared on the web thanks to OpenAI, and it got me thinking if our deleted data is really invisible to the general public. I had a weird situation before where a guy on Reddit pulled up to my DMs and sent me screenshots of my deleted Reddit posts - super eerie. I asked him how he got them but he wouldn't say. Now I'm really paranoid and wonder if I should just delete social media (and Reddit) altogether, even though even that probably doesn't protect your privacy and these posts still exist somewhere and could be connected to me.

Today I've been hit with the demand to provide my date of birth in order to see "NSFW" content on here, mind you, this has nothing do to with pornographic content or similar, but anything marked as NSFW for whatever reason, like it could be someone else's profile with barely anything in it.

I am in the EU browsing on desktop, and I know this has been happening for a while, but the methods for verifying are ridiculous, shady, and invasive; only through the service "Persona" it literally gives 2 options:

- Submit Government ID: Share photos of a photo ID to verify your identity and date of birth.

- Submit Selfie: Share photos of your face to estimate your age.

The absolute audacity to ask for someone's ID is beyond ridiculous and creepy to be honest, I don't want my data to be stored who knows where at the hands of a bunch of randos (third-party that won't face consequences when they screw up), not to mention that it could lead to impersonation if this data is eventually leaked, which most likely will.

The same goes for the selfies of your face, which I assume will have to go over an AI to "prove" that you're an adult... as if AI wouldn't make a mistake on this (pro tip: it has and it will). This is not an effective method at all, so it's obvious that it's just an excuse to extract data, something I also experienced with Facebook many years ago.

The major problem will come when they demand such info just to log in at all, but in regards to mature content on here, their verification is just stupid. Even after assuming for the sake of the argument that it's to protect kids, nothing stops a minor from using someone else's ID, in their family or not, asking a friend to provide those seflies, or even attempt to bypass/convince the AI themselves.

The best way to protect kids on the Internet is at the hands of their parents, they are the ones who are in control and should be in control. If you cannot have your child on a website that has mature content somewhere like it is on Reddit, then maybe they shouldn't be on Reddit in the first place, in which case you could blacklist it from the device, or whitelist what you want. Or maybe you should pay attention to what your kid does on the Internet (like you would do for other things), as that's your job and not everyone else's.

The cherry on the top is that some of the actual criminals hurting children are the ones pushing for these policies, hurting the privacy and security of normal people.

So I interact with a few different people that wear Meta Glasses and rather than starting every conversation with "Meta stop recording" I'm wondering if it's possible to clip a high-ish powered IR light either onto my glasses, side of my cap or even on my lapel that will blast the lenses with IR light and temporarily blind them. Anyone tried anything like this?

I just wanna throw it out into the wild. These glasses with cameras. Are doing very similar crap that flock cameras do. Just your wearing said flock camera on yo face! You’re just silly, a dang walking talking flock camera! Anytime I see anyone wearing these I think, Nice Meta glasses, did the ole Flock boys hire you to protect their property, or are you just into the freelance surveillance market??

Basically title.

She’s had an alexa in the kitchen for ages so she can ask it to play music while cooking, but the thing bricked and won’t even power up anymore. Not to mention the stupid alexa ai bs and just amazon in general.

I want to be a cool son and get her something that would fill that round, speaker-shaped void on the kitchen counter while keeping her and my family safe from prying ears(?).

I do have a NAS server set up, so it would be cool if it could connect, but also not a deal breaker.

If this is an inappropriate question for the sub, I apologize. I just couldn’t think of where to start asking.

Hate to admit it but I've been feeling nothing but utter dread towards it and how the world is going. It's to the point where I'm genuinely considering dying. I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way.

Either way, with the KIDS act already at Senate, I don't think it will die anytime soon but here's to hoping.

Companies and governments make it so hard to have privacy, especially digital privacy and im left wondering. is it really worth it. Aside from some basic privacy things like a vpn it just does not seem worth the effort. I would much rather deal with the consequences by using adblocks instead of trying to stop google or facebook from getting the data to serve me ads in the first place.

its exhausting. everywhere you look is something trying to invade your privacy. and im tired man.

So this might not be the right sub i still want to know yknow. Surely there is a tool for this